Lance of Battletech Mechs

Chum Drew gave me some Mechs to paint last year and they have languished in the lead mountain for about 12 months. Today that all changed and they are now complete.

The two on the right were also painted under the auspices of the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge so shall also contribute to my painting total there!

No idea what kind of Mech they are but they are nice models to paint and don't take a lot of effort to do.

You can check out the post regarding the two on the right on the Painting Challenge blog here

Battletech Arbalest and Raptor II

During the GameHoleCon convention I had a browse around the traders and one chap was doing a buy-one-get-one-free offer on some Battletech blisters, so I picked a couple that I liked and bought them home to join my stable.

I've not read up on the 'history' and it may be that adding these two to my lance is an anachronism but I picked the models more based on how they looked rather than for reasons of back-story or battlefield effectiveness. Which truth be know is why I paint most of the stuff I am painting these days.

Both have been painted in the WWII Soviet scheme that I used on the previous Dragon II I bought to use at GameHoleCon.

The first model is an Arbalest a 25-ton mech with a pair of LRM10 and a pair of medium lasers. Checking Sarna this one is suitable for use in 3073

The second is a Raptor-II a 40-ton mech with a SRM6 and two medium lasers. Again I checked Sarna and this is a 3077 model so useful with the Arbalest.

Here are all three units of my nascent lance. Unfortunately, the Dragon II is a 3099 model so a little later than the other two, I'm not too bothered though, I bought what I fancied painting rather than for any backstory or effectiveness reasons.

Battletech at GameHoleCon

A late write-up but I've been away on business in Michigan all week and like a dufus forgot to upload the photos before I went.

Last weekend I attended the local GameHoleCon event at the Alliant Energy Centre, billed as he largest tabletop gaming convention in the upper Midwest.the place was certainly packed out with hundreds of gamers. I attended on the Saturday and as far as I could tell it was about 45% role-playing games, 45% board-games, 8% fantasy games (Warmachine & Warhammer) then a single historical game (a nice looking SCW game in 15mm) and the five of us playing Battletech, so for $35.00 for the day I would have been pretty light on activities if I had not already arranged to spend the day playing in the BattleTech arena.

Drew has built two excellent combat arenas, from a base of computer packaging he has added hi-tech lighting and a mirrored black floor and other accessories to make a fantastic playing area. As you play barricades can be lifted into place to add cover and make channels between the protagonists.

Five of us would be playing in a round-robin over the course of the day and my Dragon saw off all comers apart from one, I'm afraid that I am a new-newbie to BattleTech, having last played in around 1989 I reckon, so I cannot remember all the exact details but suffice to say I had a great day against three great opponents.

With a snub-nosed PPC and LRM launchers my Dragon was set up to engage in a long-range firefight and hopefully the opponents mech would be too battered to be effective when it closed for combat. I played games against Chris, Drew and Joe winning each in turn with my long range fire being particularly ineffective and then having some very lucky rolls when we closed to finish them off. In my last game against Mark the continued poor dice for my long range fire continued and he mashed me up bad at close range. Four great opponents and I'm happy (and shocked) to have gone 3 and 1.

To top it off among the food trucks doing the catering one of my favourites from many days out in and around Madison FIBs was in attendance, time for a great Italian Veggie-Brat and a beer with the chaps.

I polished off my spend for the day with a couple of new 'Mechs' an Arbalest and a Raptor II, I can see me playing a few more games of this.

More pics from the action.

Battletech Dragon II

It's been about thirty years since I last played BattleTech with the chaps in Mansfield, But, chum Drew is running an arena at the local GameHoleCon and I decided to download a copy of the rules, buy a Mech and dive in.

Dive in I did, fired up eBay and made a purchase. Damn! I brought the wrong mech! This Dragon II is a 3099 model we are playing in 3067 - whoops, shall pay more attention to the fluff next time.

I must say these things are a beast to put together, so many fiddly components but a couple of hours with pin-vise, scalpel, files and mitre-bond I think I got quite a dynamic pose with the beast thundering along at near its capacity 64km/h.

I also initially mounted on a 30mm hex base but it was way too unstable so replaced with a 40mm circle of MDF.

As we have house guests my painting time is limited and my hobby area out of bounds - it is the guest room - so as I am currently painting WWII Soviets I utilised the same palette on this with a base-coat of US Field Drab, Russian Green and Dark Red followed by a Sepia wash and then highlighting up. After painting the windows and doing the brown-lining the model was weathered with Tamiya powders and the base was painted black and highlighted to hopefully match Drew's' arena.

 I also took a few images from above.